


Fever Dream

by kubotits



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, PG-13 if you squint, Sick Fic, albeit PG-rated ones, and participate in inappropriate employer/employee activities, playing-doctor!Felicity is an over-bearing worrywart, sick!Oliver is an over-affectionate idiot, they hold hands and talk about Star Trek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 01:20:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1180210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kubotits/pseuds/kubotits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the dead of winter and because of a fever, Oliver is just too hot to be standing upright—but of course that sounded <i>much</i> better in Felicity's head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever Dream

**Author's Note:**

> At what point in the series does this happen? Pre-Barry (sorry, baby) season two missing scene wedged between episodes as a canon-divergent AU? Sure, let's go with that. I only just shotgunned Arrow last month and I'm already taken with these idiots and I'm in it for the long-haul.
> 
> Ah, just in time for Valentine's Day! (Even if it was supposed to be up in December...)

Felicity Smoak, IT support and hacker extraordinaire turned Oliver Queen's glorified secretary and vigilante aid- and abet-er, did _not_ get paid to freeze her ass off in a night club basement. And if she did, it better have been a _lot_ of money. She sat at the interface shivering in her nude-hued overcoat, a pale lavender pashmina wrapped firmly and high around her neck to cover her pink lips and the tip of her nose—though, much to her frustration, her glasses kept fogging up with each breath. Her blonde hair hung around her as she wished for stockings and fuzzy earmuffs. Keeping her hands firmly plunged in her overcoat pockets, Felicity took turns glaring menacingly at the computer screens and then at the keyboard, hoping for a miraculous development of telekinetic powers to push the keys for her. Or maybe, just maybe, her pure contempt for the cold could take tangible form and type for her.

Although, it wasn't as if she actually had any work to get done at the moment, impatiently clicking her teeth together and squirming her fingers in her pockets: she was just bored. Diggle had gone out to see why the heating was down and Oliver was out on Arrow business in what was left of the Glades. Neither had contacted her as of yet. The thought crossed her mind that maybe she should be worried about their, particularly Oliver's, status—and she was, just not as much as usual because the _damn cold_ was making it a little hard to concentrate on anything other than the imminent possibility of frostbite.

Of course, the moment she began wondering when she would be hearing from her elusive boss, her phone rang. Reluctantly, she pulled her hand from her pocket to tap a finger to the Bluetooth in her ear. Cold air chilled her shaking hand before she had even greeted, “Hey, Oliver. What can these magic hands do to you?” She winced, abruptly stopping her finger-flexing pantomime. Hastily, she added, “ _For_ you! _For you_.”

The accidental innuendo didn't seem to break Oliver's stride, though from the other side she could hear the most minute of sighs before he asked for a trace, with a slight smile in his voice if she wasn't mistaken. Thus, while she was internally chastising herself for forgetting gloves, the other hand was forced to emerge.

Just another day in the life. Or rather, night in the life. She really hoped her circadian rhythms wouldn't suffer as well for her sacrifices. Hell, what circadian rhythms? She barely got enough sleep nowadays.

It wasn't two hours later that he was back, a little flushed and rubbing his eyes with the back of his bow-brandishing hand, smearing his greasy mask makeup. His fatigue seemed to reflect her own. So even Oliver Queen got tired sometimes.

It was still freezing. As the night had progressed, it had gotten even colder to the point that Felicity, and now Oliver, could see their breath spilling out of them. Not too far into the first hour, Diggle had called her, saying he needed to pick up parts at the hardware store and hadn't yet returned, so it was only her in the lair to greet their city's protector.

“It's like a meat-locker in here,” was the first thing out of Oliver's mouth before a proper hello. “Where's Diggle?”

“Off trying to fix the heat,” she answered, pulling her hands away from her keyboard and doing her best to keep her teeth from chattering. She flexed her fingers, trying to get feeling back into them.

Oliver smiled absently. “Fighting the good fight, then?”

She couldn't help but grin at that.

Under her watchful eye, he shirked the Hood in favor of a gray hoodie, light for the weather but he was still flushed from the hunt. He then went for the hem on his leather pants when he remembered _someone_ was staring right at him.

“Uh, Felicity?” he hinted with a boyish grin.

“Oh! Oh, right.” Instantly, she swiveled 180 in her chair, hands planted firmly on the ice-cold desk edge. She could still see him in the reflection of the monitors and despite her better judgment nothing, absolutely nothing, could keep her from looking. At least she was able to resist muttering expletives under her breath when the situation _definitely_ warranted it. She only turned back around once he was in his sweatpants, striding towards her.

“How are you holding up?” he asked.

“I am _this_ close to losing my fingers to frostbite, thank you,” she complained dramatically, demonstratively holding up her thumb and forefinger to show _just how close_ she was to losing those fingers in particular.

And then there was that gentle, familiar smile on Oliver's lips. “Come here,” he instructed softly.

Confused, Felicity cocked her head to the side, but rose from her seat nonetheless. Without warning, he took her by the hands, pulling her closer. At first Felicity thought he was going to pull her into a hug, but then he did something even more surprising: he held her hands in the pockets of his hoodie.

“Uhh??” she squeaked, suddenly way too close to him. There was less than a foot of unprofessional space between them. His hands were big and warm around hers and he smelled like sweat—but like, a really, really good kind of sweat. The whole situation was...more than a little distracting.

“They'll warm up faster like this,” he whispered in explanation, his warm breath ghosting over her forehead.

Now, the thought that Felicty and Oliver touched _very_ freely had popped into her head from time to time—in fact her mind had often lingered on the way he would cup her cheek or squeeze her shoulder every once in a while. This, however, was on another level entirely when it came to intimacy. It wasn't so much the proximity (they worked in close quarters often) nor the hand-holding (they weren't shy about comforting gestures), but the sheer purpose of warming her hands and the length of time for which it went on was what gave her pause. It was much too long a time. Far too long for her to know where in the hell she was supposed to be looking. His eyes? His pockets where their hands met? His lips?

 _Definitely_ not his lips...

Her mind whirred with all the ways it was Not Normal for your boss to offer to warm up your hands by _putting them in his pockets_. Even stripping away the title, it wasn't much of an _exclusively_ friendly gesture either. But holding hands could indeed be construed as a platonic circumstance...Maybe not a _very_ platonic circumstance, but...

The argument held little water when she was still staring at his lips.

Perhaps it was best she protest that she had her own pockets and was a big girl perfectly capable of warming her own hands without his help. But...but his hands _were_ warm. Actually, a little _too_ warm, in fact...

Realizing this, Felicity looked back into Oliver's eyes, which seemed a little distant. This was indeed a normal occurrence for Oliver, he was usually back on the island when he got that kind of look, but there was something different about this one. His eyes seemed more glazed over than haunted, and then she watched as his eyelids slowly drooped and then closed altogether. Maybe he _was_ just tired.

“Oliver?” she asked timorously.

He gave a little hum, swaying a little.

“Are you okay?”

Another sway, and suddenly he was leaning down with a small sigh. Eyes still closed, he gently rested his forehead against hers, shoulders losing all tension. Klaxon alarms went off in Felicity's head. _Whoa, whoa, whoa!_ Oliver took a deep breath through his nostrils, letting it out in another exhausted sigh. Once she had gotten over her initial shock, however, she noticed—

“You're really hot,” she blurted out.

Oliver finally opened his eyes, pulling away to tilt his head and quirk a confused smile. “Uh. Thanks?”

“No! I mean, yeah, but n-no! Your forehead.” She wriggled one hand from his grasp, risking the cold to press her palm to his forehead. “Oliver, I think you have a fever.”

“Oh. Yeah, probably,” he said haltingly, a little dazed. “Don't worry, I wasn't drugged or anything. Thea was sick, I probably got it from her.”

“Okay, well, you're looking kind of wobbly, I should take you to bed—Get you in bed—A bed! To rest!” Felicity groaned.

“Yeah...I'm just going to...” He turned, scanning the room for the table they usually laid people out on. “Your redecorating kind of...”

“Oh! Your mini-hospital first aid stash is still here, let me just—” And she began to clear the table for him.

“Felicity,” he warned, before slumping against her from the side.

“Oliver,” she grunted, barely holding him up and helping him up onto the table, “you're like 200 pounds of pure muscle.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

Once she'd laid him out, Felicity covered him with at least three of those in-shock blankets they kept in ambulances, as well as a shiny Mylar one, and unceremoniously shoved—mostly because she was nervous—a thermometer in Oliver's mouth.

“You get to play doctor with me again,” he chuckled his way into a weak cough.

“Shh, you'll mess up the reading.” She added in a mutter, “Your temperature spikes and suddenly you develop a sense of humor.”

“Hey!” he admonished. “I've always had a sense of humor.”

“Hush,” she scolded, tapping a finger to the thermometer making it _clink!_ slightly against his teeth.

Oliver tried not to grumble while she tried not to smile.

When she did finally check his temperature it was at 100.3°. “Doctor Smoak prescribes bed rest,” she said in a comically deep, authoritative tone. “Diggle can drive you when he gets back, but until then, you'll have to hang out here. Sorry if the table's uncomfortable, though I doubt your purgatory island had much in the way of mattresses so you'll probably be right at home!” She was babbling and she knew it, trying to stop and gulp down a breath or two—but it had the force of a careening avalanche. “You won't need an IV or anything, right?”

“It's just a fever,” he tried to cut in, but she was in full avalanche mode now.

“Because I wasn't kidding, I really, _really_ hate needles. And I am definitely not qualified to be sticking one in you.” She managed to slow down a little, but it didn't stop the onslaught of more questions to bombard her patient with: “What else are you supposed to do for a fever? How's it go? 'Feed a fever, starve a cold'?”

“That's an old wive's tale, Felicity,” he corrected patiently. “And it's 'feed a _cold_ , starve a _fever_.'”

Frustrated, Felicity threw up her hands in defeat. “Dammit, Jim, I'm a computer genius, not a doctor.”

Oliver cocked his head to the side, quite the feat when he was lying down. “Jim?”

She gave him a look. “Star Trek? No?” He gave a little shrug, but she continued, still hopeful: “It's funny because Bones _is_ a doctor...” He shook his head, eyebrows up, to which she deadpanned, “This was the sixties, you can't use the island as an excuse. Even if the new movie came out in 2009.”

“They made a new Star Trek movie?” he asked incredulously.

“So you _do_ know about Star Trek!”

“I would have had to been on an island for longer than five years to not know what Star Trek is.”

“Right...Uh, two movies, actually,” she amended. “Kind of a first series straight-out-of-academy reboot type thing. The science is still a little”—she twirled her fingers near her temples—“ _woohoo_ , if you know what I mean, but it's Star Trek, they've always taken liberties. It's like their thing or something.”

“Felicity.”

“Yeah, Boss?” she answered, which was kind of the equivalent of _Shutting up now._

“I'd love to hear you talk about whatever ' _woohoo'_ is”—and he looked like he meant it, which felt like a first for Felicity—“but I kind of can't sleep and do that at the same time.”

“Yeah, Boss,” she repeated.

He fell asleep almost instantly, his face tilted in her direction and mouth slightly parted. Felicity gave a tiny groan. The last thing she should have been thinking about right now was Oliver's _mouth_. Before she forgot, she sent a quick text to Diggle about Oliver's condition. Then she grabbed an emergency blanket of her own—how many of these things did they _have_?—wrapped it around herself, and settled down in her chair beside him, waiting for Diggle to come back.

It didn't take too long for Oliver to wake suddenly from a surprisingly dreamless sleep, covered in sweat and confused as to where the hell his knife was. Then he looked down at the pile of blankets on top of him and remembered what had transpired once he had come back to the foundry. In retrospect, he really only should have had the thermal one. Groaning, every bone in his body aching, he tried to prop himself up on his elbows. He froze, however, when he heard the softest little sigh of a sound beside him. He turned and there Felicity was, sleeping right next to him, cheek leaning against folded arms, open-mouthed and glasses askew. Without his prompting, she stirred a little, lips dragging on her forearm.

“Mwuh? Oliver?” she mumbled, righting her glasses.

“Hey,” he greeted gently, sitting up and starting to push back the blankets.

“Oh!” she decried, suddenly remembering her duties as self-appointed caretaker. She shot up like a rocket, just barely missing a painful collision into Oliver's chin. He dodged anyway, obviously wary of her renewed energy—but she only put it to use to touch their foreheads together. “You're still too hot to be upright—oh my _God_ , I mean your _temperature_.” She recoiled, blushing furiously, muttering, “How do I keep _doing_ that?”

Oliver just grinned. “I'll just sit for a while. I feel better, honest. Your prescription helped, Doctor Smoak.”

Felicity was sure she was turning _purple_ at this point. “Yeah, well. I need my personal hand-warmer to be healthy,” she laughed nervously.

“Felicity...” He rubbed his face with a hand. “I'm sorry, that was probably weird.”

“No, no! It was...um, yeah okay, it was weird. I mean, you were fever-addled but workplace environment, blah blah blah...At the risk of being fired—”

“I'd never fire you, Felicity,” he interrupted, voice taking on that soft quality of his that she wished she could just wrap around herself.

“W-well, it...” She slumped her shoulders, trying and failing to combat the insistent blush on her cheeks. “It was inappropriate. What with the close proximity and the touching and the kissing—” She stopped herself short.

Now it was Oliver's turn to blush. “Felicity, I wasn't that out of it, we definitely didn't kiss...”

She winced. “I-I meant the thinking...about...kissing...Like I said, _way_ inappropriate.”

“Way,” he whispered, breath catching in his throat before catching her lips in a kiss. She leaned into it, her hands gripping his thighs as he pulled her closer and closer. His big hands fit so nicely on the curve of her waist; the two of them fit so nicely together—that was the thought that beat out the protesting voice of warning in Oliver's head, telling him that he wasn't at full capacity, this was a mistake, this was... _right_.

Felicity cupped his face, dragging her nails less-than-gently through his stubble and this little throaty _growl_ escaped from him into her mouth. And she took it all, trying to find the right balance between smiling and kissing. His breathing came too quickly, idly tracing the dip in the middle of her back, fingers gliding over the little bumps in her spine. She shivered, sucking at his bottom lip.

Oliver just barely broke the kiss to quip, “Are these the kind of 'very platonic circumstances' you were talking about?”

“Not now, Oliver,” she muttered breathlessly, pulling him back by the collar.

If this was some fever-induced hallucinatory dream, he never wanted to wake up.

Just when she was about to suggest she join him on the table, they were interrupted again. Around them, there was a sudden whir of machinery, white noise otherwise had it not been so dead silent.

“The heating!” exclaimed Felicity, laughing incredulously and bumping the tip of her nose to Oliver's. “It's a Christmas miracle!”

“It's a _Hanukkah_ miracle,” he corrected, scrunching his face and returning the Eskimo kiss.

She beamed. “You remembered.”

“Of course I did,” was all he could get out before she kissed him again.

“I leave you two alone for a _couple hours_ ,” came a deep voice from behind.

Felicity jumped back as if electrocuted. “Diggle!” she cried. “I was just, uh, checking if he was better.” She patted Oliver on the shoulders and chest, a little too forcefully. “Yup, very better, much healthy. I mean, much wetter, very wealthy. _Much better, very healthy!_ ” Trying to find a distraction, she sprinted back to the safety of her interface. _“_ Ah, so much work to be done, lots of work!”

Diggle only crossed his arms, watching her back with a smirk on his face.

She kept aimlessly pounding the keys before slumping and begging, “Please stop looking at me.”

He complied, but only to say, “I think she caught your bad lying, Oliver.”

“I'm...I think I'm just gonna lie back down,” said Oliver. “I suddenly feel light-headed.”

“I wonder why,” said Diggle slyly, eyebrows raised. “How about I take you home?”

He agreed, but only after sending a longing glance to Felicity's tensed back. She refused to turn around as they left, waving over her shoulder.

By the next day, Oliver was already feeling well enough to go into work at Queen Consolidated. He was still wondering if what had happened the night before had _actually_ happened and wasn't just some fever dream, when he walked by Felicity's empty desk. He did a double-take, swiveling on his heel. He had been dreading some complicated confrontation full of common sense and easy-to-follow bullet-pointed reasons why they couldn't do anything like that _ever again_ no matter how much they _desperately_ wanted to—but now that she wasn't here, he missed her.

In place of Felicity, however, Oliver found a little gift basket. Curious, he picked it up, astonished at what he found in it. Piled high were a bunch of different cold medicines, fever reducers, and vitamins. Wedged between a can of chicken noodle soup and a box of Sudefed was a little note. Oliver picked it up and read:

_I better get paid sick leave._  
 _-Felicity_

Oliver couldn't hold back his grin.


End file.
